Here at Product Design Experts we are well known for designing and engineering products involving wireless communication technologies, such as: Bluetooth (BLE), WiFi, LTE, Zigbee, Z-Wave, BACnet, LoRa and IR. And, in almost every project that our team members have been involved with, there have been significant engineering trade-offs that had to be decided upon.
When defining the requirements for a new wireless product it helps to consider, as a minimum:
What is the function of the device and its related use cases?
Who are the intended users and what capabilities are they expected to have?
What is the device required to wirelessly communicate (transmitting and/or receiving)… if it must?
A LoRa engineered product designed for long-range data communications with the smallest battery possible.
When considering these questions for your new wireless device, there can be acute wireless engineering challenges that arise. For example:
If the electrical engineering team needs to consider engineering a battery operated wireless product, the anticipated range of the wireless communications could adversely affect the size of the battery needed or the wireless technologies that would be reasonable to use. For example, a product designed to operate over Bluetooth may not be feasible for an outdoor scenario.
An “always connected” wireless device requires a wireless gateway, of some sort, to maintain the communications. If the intended user’s Bluetooth enabled smartphone or WiFi router is not expected to be in range of the device either a different communication technology will likely need to be considered – such as LoRa or Zigbee or potential tandem radio technologies.
If wireless Bluetooth engineering is required for the device, designing a mobile application is nearly always the next consideration. Our mobile application engineers will then need to know whether they will be designing an application for Android or iOS, or both.
Steve Wenner is a Product Design Expert with over 35 years of proficiency in analog, power, embedded, and PCB designs. His seasoned experience includes successful product development across diverse sectors, including military, automotive, industrial, and commercial industries.
